Life, Love, and Good Memories

"Country music is the people's music. It just speaks about real life and about truth and it tells things how they really are." ~Faith Hill
Country music is music is similar to a fine white wine; it is an acquired taste. Most people who adore country music and listen to it almost exclusively have acquired the love from a young age from their parents and have evolved this love into their own. However, there are those, like myself, who have acquired the taste in another fashion.
I started to seriously get into and seek out country music when I started going to a dance hall/bar just outside of my small town in high school. In our small community, this was the place to go and dance and be seen on the weekends. The town in which the dance hall was located was so small that in fact we just called it for the town name; El Maton. Looking back, this small dance hall was not exciting or even very interesting but when I was sixteen years old wearing my cute blouse, shorts, and cowboy boots, out with all my friends and dancing with my high school crushes, those El Maton nights were a dream. It was here I developed my love for the music. The more I went, the more I sought out music for my iPod and country radio stations to listen to in my car. Even now, I go attend dance halls, and although they may be bigger and better than El Maton; although, perhaps different songs, the music has not changed.
Country music reminds us of the slow living, summer days sitting on the back porch and drinking sweet tea as you watch the sunset and the lightning bugs start to come out.  The music speaks of faith in God, hard times, bravery, and remembering those we have lost. There are countless songs of love and sweet times when the world is lovely because you are with the one whom you adore, there are songs of love lost and missing the one that got away, and there are songs about fishing and drinking beer.
Country music embodies all that is good in the country, especially in the south, where there are dirt roads, tractors, fields to plow and harvest, sunshine to be embraced (along with the sweat), hard work, and long evenings. It is the music that reminds us to slow down and remember where we come from. Once discovered and embraced, it is the music that one seeks out and consumes over half (if not all) the radio presets. There are those who prefer the city life and choose a different life set to a different tune and there are those who just can not stand all of the bad vowels in the singing but to those the music speaks to, country music is the lifestyle we wish to maintain.